Rise of Organised Labour

Question 1

How does industrial capitalism account for the rise of organised labour in the late nineteenth-century in Britain?

Answer 1

• Part of the industrialization process:
• Transformed both urban areas and the countryside - urbanisation
• Workers migrated from the countryside into urban areas as demand for artisan labour decreased and the demand for factory workers increased
• Change in method of productivity
• Changing relationship between the employee and the employer
• Change in production methods- factory and machine-based meant that the worker was no longer involved in the entire process. Rather, they would now focus on one specific area of production and would likely not interact with the consumer whatsoever - not so much in Britain where cheap agrarian labour was exploited and handheld technology was the most progressive form of mechanization

Question 2

What are some of the global trends of industrialisation that contributed to the rise in organised labour?

Answer 2

• Development of capitalist societies across Europe
• Growth of markets and large businesses
• Diminishing rural communities

Question 3

What is agency?

Answer 3

•Agency- individuals being active agents of history and potentially shaping it - doing things

Question 4

What is Marx’s Theory of Alienation?

Answer 4

Focus on the changing relationship between producers and consumers. The disconnection between the two generates alienation among workers

Question 5

What were pre-industrial protests like?

Answer 5

• Sporadic
• Unpredictable as they weren’t tied to organisations
• Heterogeneous: no specific class
• Unorganized
• Short lived
• Usually took the form of Peasant Revolt

Question 6

Why did Artisan workers have to acclimatize?

Answer 6

Artisan workers lost their relationship with production as they had to relocate to factories and mills with a focus on mass production rather than cultivation

Question 7

Changes in the production system often what?

Answer 7

Provoked resentment among workers

Question 8

Artisan labourers no longer sold goods but what?

Answer 8

Sold their labour instead

Question 9

What is the classical Marxist interpretive framework?

Answer 9

• Protest as a product of capitalism’s contradictions
• Workers become increasingly class conscious, recognize their exploitation and act in a way that benefits their class
• Forms of organization and politics that focus on class prejudice / based on the relationship between the capitalist and the exploited worker

Question 10

What are the criticisms of a Marxist interpretation?

Answer 10

If it were true, the most industrialized countries would suffer the most turbulence but this was not the case eg., Russia.
We would expect some correlation between output and unrest but when Capitalism suffered, there was not necessarily uprisings

Question 11

Which historian emphasizes a Marxist interpretation?

Answer 11

Tilly, 1975

Question 12

What is the Artisan Thesis?

Answer 12

• Suggests class consciousness played little part in generating labour representation
• Emphasizes the relative status of skilled workers and their disproportionate participation in uprisings.
• Suggests they only got involved to protect their relative social status

Question 13

What Marxist assumption does the Artisan Thesis challenge?

Answer 13

That radicalism emerged from material conditions

Question 14

What are the criticisms of the Artisan Thesis?

Answer 14

• Difficult to see class consciousness as most workers suffered poor living and labour conditions
• They were the labour aristocracy and held an advantage over unskilled workers as they were harder to replace
• Lots of the unions that emerged later on were headed by the socially advanced workers

Question 15

How did urbanization contribute to the rise of organised labour?

Answer 15

As people were closely packed together, close-knit communities developed. This meant the spread of ideas, both radical and political, were easier spread. Workers also spent more time together/ closer together.

Question 16

What did industrialisation mean for protest?

Answer 16

Strikes, which were frequently organised by nascent trade unions, became a common form of protest.

Question 17

What were the objective of strikes and why strike?

Answer 17

Tend to have a particular objective- change the nature of the relationship between the employee and the employer
Only means in which they could express their grievances as labour was the only thing they had to sell within the system

Question 18

What was the principal function of trade unions?

Answer 18

Become more organised- eg., formation of trade unions- organisations whose principal interests is to preserve and fight for the interests of their members

Question 19

Who was an influential ideological role model?

Answer 19

Lenin

Question 20

Were ideological currents actually useful?

Answer 20

The relationship between ideas and interests - actually important? Literacy rates are low and people are generally acting in economic interests rather than ideological ideas. Interests are potentially more influential than ideas. However, ideas are not just a secondary idea and recent literature challenges this: “Changing circumstances…rather than ideological activity itself determined the perceptions of labour” (Geary, 1981, p.49).

Question 21

What political idea gained ground during this period and why?

Answer 21

Socialism: unequal societies are inefficient and equal distribution is important. Gained popularity during this period

Question 22

Why did constitutional change bring socialist ideas into being?

Answer 22

Legislative reform acts that expand the electorates of European democracies- political parties can no longer win elections by appealing to small demographics, rather a large electorate.

Question 23

What is the de-radicalization thesis?

Answer 23

The argument that the economic boom of the 1880s diluted the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat

Question 24

How does Geary challenge the de-radicalization thesis?

Answer 24

challenge the assumption that workers' attitudes were more revolutionary in the 1850s and 1860s- Geary for example: were they more revolutionary before? These attitudes and approaches can be seen before and there is nothing distinctive about these decades. The capitalist state is still positioned against the ordinary people in many different ways- no linear process by which working class people get more rights. Instead, it is an uneven process.
Small gradual change rather than immediate

Question 25

What are the general changes in protest over the period?

Answer 25

Food riots change to strikes
Spontaneous to organised and class-based
Local to national and parliamentary

Question 26

What encouraged “new unionism”?

Answer 26

New unions had lower entry fees and membership fee than older craft unions
Influence of other groups - as certain groups succeeded, others followed suit which then encourage more groups to form etc.

Question 27

What was Chartism?

Answer 27

Chartism was a working class movement, which emerged in 1836 and was most active between 1838 and 1848. The aim of the Chartists was to gain political rights and influence for the working classes.

Question 28

What was “new unionism”?

Answer 28

“New Unionism” - unskilled workers organising themselves such as Shop Assistants and Clerks - but skilled workers held a bargaining chip
○ Lots of the new unions advertised themselves as encompassing all workers but generally those that survived focused on protecting one specific group from outsiders
Militancy was used to ensure quick results which thus demonstrated success and attracted more members

Question 29

How did the idea of the household undermine women’s movements?

Answer 29

The household, perhaps the backbone of society, was based upon male-dominance and this was reflected in societal movements - male workers were seen to be defending their families by taking a stand against the capitalist - the woman was seemingly a supportive figure

Question 30

Did Chartism support women?

Answer 30

Chartism claimed to involve everybody from every background and both genders but explicitly did not support votes for women. A woman’s role was within the household and although some contributed within the popular sphere, they were never pubic speakers. Instead, from the outside-in the movement appeared extremely male-dominated, a trend which incapsulated all movements of the time

Question 31

Were women organised?

Answer 31

Less than 3% of potential women workers organised - Women’s Trade Union league an example of existing organisation